If you hire people just because they can do a job, they'll work for your money. But if you hire people who believe what you believe, they'll work for you with blood and sweat and tears.

Don't characterize loners as aloof or crowd seekers as arrogant. They may be living out their story.

Can you still see and hear? Do you have your senses of taste and smell? Can you walk? Run? Do you have a motorized chair if you're unable to walk on your own? Come on—let's get it all on the list. Ask friends or family for help making your list. What do they see you as having? What do they think you're lucky to have? What do they admire in you?

Ownership of an idea makes cooperation with its tenets much more likely.

Pervasive gender exclusivity in the organic development of the church does not—indeed, it cannot—bear ripe fruit, because half of what is required for maturity is all but missing. It's tantamount to slicing the body of Christ at the waist and dividing it pound for pound. We could claim each half got their share, but the body would still be in pieces.

Employees that feel known and they feel like they know why their job matters and they have a sense of measuring it stay later, do extra work, and are committed to the organization above the requirements that they have.

There's a problem with the hierarchical orientation, though. When the numbers get too big, the thing breaks down. A pecking order can hold only so many chickens.

God's purpose for the Christian's involvement in the church was radically different from my gas-station approach. The church wasn't merely a place to swing by for a fill-up. The journey of the Christian faith was supposed to be made with other believers. The church isn't a gas station, I realized. It's the bus I'm supposed to be traveling on.

Making Congress into a less crisis-driven institution starts with electing members of Congress who can take the long view.

It's important to have people who are absolutely willing to say you're wrong or who have a totally different perspective than you do on everything. Fresh ideas are hard to come by, and good ones are even harder.

I think of the New York City Ballet as the Yankees without George Steinbrenner.

There's not a lot of short quarterbacks in the league, but I think there's more guys paving the way for the transition of not really caring about how big you are, how tall you are.